Motel Nudes, opens up the world laid out in the previous instalment of the Desert Nudes series, and features solely miniature works, echoing both the ‘love token’ and personal devotional images throughout various art history canons from the High Renaissance to the Victorian era. Antique and purpose-made, the 17 portholes provide a tiny alice-in-wonderland-like looking glass to peek through and to slow down languorously in.

In an antidote to the archetypal images of Western machismo and a flurry of movement which often feature in the cowboy canon, Lohr instead offers depictions that slow the viewer down. We are given cool, calm, nude women who languor, always alone, across beds, plastic chairs or the gently burnt carpets of desert motels.

Self-assured and unrestricted, these women subtly emulate a soft power in the daily heroism of simply being in a compositional and visual language that resembles a cocktail of Raymond Carver’s short stories, Edward Hopper scenes, Victorian lover’s trinkets, and Renaissance nude postures.

Smoke coils from lit cigarettes, legs lift feet perfectly poised in the air, blonde, brunette and auburn hair brushed over shoulders, stomachs at ease; these women sit in their own stillness and the enjoyment of the perfection of a moment alone.

These scenes that are played out by the women with a flick of a cowboy heel and cigarette butt are based on the real and imagined memory that the artist has preserved in her mind. Stemming from Lohr’s personal experience of being in these places and travelling alone, the duality of woman emerges; from being in luxurious reverie in commonplace environments, to reclaiming power whilst simultaneously playing up to the male gaze.

Caught between a depiction of a reality we feel we know, and an escapist fantasy mirage just out of touch, these women, siren-like, encourage the viewer to step into their world as a visitor, but make no space for them to become a character. Made evident in the environment around these women - there is no room made for another person, no indication of another character to tell the story through the clue of a ruffled bedspread or a second cup, and yet despite this, we are drawn into the miniatures. We dive in to look closer still at this ice-cream coloured world, the size pulling us forward, as we pass through these portholes each on our own journey through the desert.